


Drawn, Redrawn

by AbsurdHerb



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bisexual Johnny Silverhand, Drinking, Fluff and Angst, Gender Neutral V, I tagged the two most explicitly hinted at, Infidelity, Introspection, Johnny Silverhand Being An Asshole, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, READ INTO THIS WHATEVER RELATIONSHIPS YOU LIKE, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Swearing, Temperance Ending (for a bit), but I wrote this with a poly ship in mind, so uh have fun?, you know the drill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:47:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28973820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbsurdHerb/pseuds/AbsurdHerb
Summary: When you meet someone crucial to your life, you gain a mark with their name. When they die, the color fades and the name becomes illegible.Read: Johnny Silverhand is forced to acknowledge that other people matter, and that helps him fix the rest.
Relationships: Goro Takemura/V, Kerry Eurodyne/Johnny Silverhand
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Drawn, Redrawn

**Author's Note:**

> I like soulmate AUs quite a bit. Obviously. I wrote one. Still, I find them too restricting and formulaic. There's only so much conflict you can have if two people are destined for each other, after all. So I took the typical concept of soulmates and tweaked it. A soulmate is just someone that seriously affects your life. End definition. Of course, people don't like that, so they try to categorize it in a few ways. The concept of platonic and romantic soulmates survives. We also add in a nemesis mark. That's self-explanatory. Past that, people start to differ. Some refer to a mark as their anchor: someone convenient they keep coming back to. Some might call a soulmate a crux: someone whose presence helped them turn a corner or make a major choice. The waters get muddied further by the fact that a mark doesn't always appear right away, isn't always reciprocated, and, even when reciprocated, can differ in intensity or design. And that people don't have some mystic third eye about the marks--they're just guessing.
> 
> Fate's a bitch. What else is new?

Johnny gets his first soul mark when he ships out to war, too young and far too idealistic. The boy is his age plus a year or two, scrappy and bright in a way that battle robs from most. It fades from him, bit by bit, as they struggle to survive. A haunted, hunted look replaces it. 

Somehow, he manages a smile when he takes the bullet. He keeps smiling as he lies in Johnny’s arms and his blood obscures the corporate logo on his too-large fatigues. 

There is a second dog tag on Johnny’s chest. He cannot take it off. He cannot read the name.

//

Johnny doesn’t know who the man is. Doesn’t know a damn thing about him, except that a meddling mutual friend thought they should meet.

But hell if he can’t play.

Two incomplete tattoo sleeves decorate the stranger’s arms. He has no visible chrome, but a riotous mess of black hair. One fancy-looking cheap-ass waistcoat wrinkles against the seat behind him, discarded. The sleeves of a dress shirt gather at his elbows. He hums along as he plays, smooth, even, and low.

He looks up.

Johnny meets his eyes, mouth opening for a wry comment. Writing sears across his skin, cutting him off. The name  _ Kerry Eurodyne  _ sits in a comfortable scrawl across the back of his hand, like an autograph in ostentatious golden ink.

Kerry (presumably) groans, eyes fixed on the back of his hand. From where Johnny stands, he can see only an arching silver band. 

“Tell me you’ve got a stage name.”

“Johnny Silverhand.”

Kerry grins and stands, reaching out for a handshake. “Much better. I’m Kerry.”

His voice sounds good even speaking. Johnny leaves his hand by his side. “What makes you think we’ll be playing together, Kerry?”

Kerry folds his hand back. “I saw you listening. Didn’t exactly seem unimpressed.”

“You play well,” Johnny admits.

“Yep. Do you?”

Kerry holds out his guitar with one hand. There’s a name on his other hand and a glitter in his eyes. 

_ I could love you _ , Johnny thinks. He takes the guitar.

//

The woman next to him reminds him of Kerry, and he’s not sure why. She’s bold where Kerry is quiet. She’s contentious where he’s peaceable. She’s armed and dangerous, both with actual weaponry and with scathing commentary, whereas the most dangerous thing Kerry’s ever wielded was guilt.

Johnny scowls, unwilling to remember why he’s drinking, and waves at the bartender for another.

The woman watches with bemused judgment. “Really?” she asks. “ _ That’s  _ what you’re drinking?”

Johnny frowns at his whiskey, then at the woman, just for good measure. She rolls her eyes and waves at the bartender.

“Two tequila old-fashioneds, with Cerveza and a chili garnish.” The bartender scurries off, and her eyes flick back to Johnny. “You’ll like this better.”

“Who’re you to say?” he asks.

Upon deliberation, Johnny chalks the resemblance up to the hair. Hers is just as tall and dark as Kerry’s. Then the light catches it better, and he dismisses the thought. Kerry would never go green.

“I’m a solo,” she replies. “It’s my business to help people accomplish their goals as efficiently as possible. And you? You want to get so drunk you can’t think.”

The bartender puts the drinks in front of her, and she pushes one over. “This’ll help.”

Johnny takes a sip. It isn't half-bad. Actually, it’s the best damn thing he’s ever drunk. He turns towards the woman, raises the glass in a toast, then lowers it to his lip with his very best smirk.

The woman laughs, sharp and dangerous. Johnny would kill to hear that laugh again. She grabs his arm, turning him so his shoulder faces her. She scribbles something there—he can feel the pen nib, hisses at its sharp press. When she finishes, her hand lingers. Her eyes do too. Johnny leans forward, and she meets him halfway. Her hand is still on his shoulder. It burns like her cocktail, like tequila and chili. 

She leans back with a smile and a faint flush. “Try again when you’re sober,” she says.

Johnny wakes up the next morning to two marks on his shoulder—the first is a number, written in fading pen, and the second is what looks to be a tattoo. It’s a half-circle of deep blue with Polaris situated square in the center.  _ Rogue Amendiares _ curves across the top edge in a black almost indistinguishable from the sky. 

He drafts a text to Kerry, but, somehow, he never hits send.

//

Alt Cunningham is her name. He knows it because it winds around his ankle in still-tingling letters bold and colorful and geometric enough that, to casual examination, it resembles nothing more than an abstract design. He knows it because she whispered it into his ear while he pressed his lips against her throat in fervent prayer.

He had pulled back for a moment. “Call me Robert and the whole thing’s off, soulmate or not.”

“Johnny,” she purred.

“Alt,” he whispered back.

//

He’s losing them. He should have realized before. Maybe he did realize before. Arasaka took Alt, he left Kerry behind, and now here’s Rogue, glued to his side as he dives into the middle of literal gunfire.

Fuck, he loves her. That probably means he’ll kill her too.

It’s for the best that he does the last part alone.

With the last little time he has, the mere minutes that Rogue found him, he fucks Arasaka over and maybe gives Alt a second chance. It’ll have to do.

And maybe Kerry had a point every time he called Johnny a narcissistic asshole because he walks out of that office rather than run. He walks—

And lands on his ass, face to face with the least human thing he’s ever seen. 

“That’s Smasher!” someone screams on the mic

Johnny feels something stamp itself against his unoccupied shoulder, searing heat placed right above the metal. He doesn’t look, but he sees Smasher feel it too. Sees the way they look at each other, knowing exactly what fate has in store.

Johnny likes that. Bitch never bothered to be clear before.

Smasher grins. And Johnny runs.

//

V lies sprawled across their bed. It’s late, but not as late as they normally sleep. Boredom flickers across their mind. That bodes trouble. Boredom for V means mischief, and Johnny can already feel the edges of an idea rolling in their mind.

“You have any soulmates, Johnny?”

That's not the trouble he expected.

He flickers into existence and joins them in staring at the mark on their forearm. It’s an elaborate cross, once colored a dozen shades of red, orange, and green, and now a simple gradient of gray. An indistinct smudge sits against one side where  _ Jackie Welles  _ had once been. V’s gaze flickers up from there to their hand, where  _ Goro Takemura  _ nestles politely against their trigger finger in Arasaka red.

“A few.”

“Wonder what happened to their tattoos.”

“Faded,” Johnny answers thoughtlessly. “But still there. More desaturated than grayscale, you know?”

V shoots upright. “No way. We’ve met one?”

Johnny sighs and grumbles, but he turns his right shoulder towards V before they start spouting off guesses. V reaches out, but thinks better of it and stops short, though they still hunch close to read the name written there. Johnny feels their breath on his shoulder. The illusion of closeness bites.

“You’re kidding,” they snort. “Fucking Rogue?”

“Mmhm.”

They lean back. “You know there’s a whole mythos around you, right? I mean, you as Rogue’s soulmate, not you as you.”

Johnny twists, cocking an eyebrow in V’s direction. “Is there?”

V flops backward with a shit-eating grin. “Yup. Rouge’s never said a thing about it, only that it’s for a quote-unquote, ‘old flame’.”

Fifty years in Mikoshi hadn’t dulled Johnny’s memory. He knew his mark on Rogue like he knew her mark on him—by heart, soul, and study. Her mark on him was the night sky and polar star. His mark on her was daylight and fire, the sun so bright it blended with the burning city beneath.

“Rogue herself, stooping to puns. What has the world come to?”

“One time, someone asked her why it hasn’t gone completely black. She told that gonk that ‘if she knew, she would fix it’. Guy who asked turned up dead a week later.”

Johnny’s lips twitch up. “If it was Rogue, they wouldn’t have found the body.”

V shrugs. “Be that as it may. Consensus is that she killed you. Or failed to, and left you stuck in a coma somewhere. Or in cryo. Or an android. Or anything else improbably sensational.”

Johnny tilts his head. “I’d make a good droid.”

“Well, you’re a fucking awful ghost, so it’d be a step up.”

They sit there for a while, as the hours creep by. It’s late enough to sleep, and the darkness has taken as much of Night City as it ever can, but V still can’t find rest. Their hands fiddle together, always around the same finger.

“It doesn’t have to mean anything, you know,” Johnny says.

V clenches their hands into fists and rolls away, tucking  _ Goro Takemura  _ out of sight. “Dunno what you’re on about.”

“Don’t bullshit me.” Johnny sits on the bed. “Fucks sake. I have one for Adam Smasher.”

“I remember.” Johnny can feel the grin ghost across V's face. “‘Saka asked you ‘bout your soulmates. You said you’d fucked all of em ‘cept Smasher, then asked when he was free.”

“Yup. Know why? Cause it didn’t mean shit. Not to him. Not to me. Hell, the first thing he did was blast it off.”

He remembers that moment. His exhaustion from the fall. Smasher’s looming face. The sadistic satisfaction as he aimed the gun.

“Point being?”

“Point being what I’ve said. The marks don’t mean shit, except what you make them out to be. And sometimes they don’t mean a thing even then.”

“Johnny?” V asks.

“Yeah?”

“Think I get why Alt left you.”

It’s one of the more pointed  _ fuck off _ s Johnny’s heard in his life. He obliges, shuttering himself off without further comment.

Alone in the dark, V curls tighter and thinks about any inch of their body save the mark between their shoulders.

//

It’s 6:15 in Night City. The sun dangles smug over the horizon, unwilling to cede to darkness just yet. The city smirks at it in defiant shadow. The graveyard shift rolls out of bed, cracks a joke about every shift being graveyard in this hellhole. The clubs just now begin to stir, rousing for the nightlife, the lowlives or the high ones, or the ones who manage both at once. 

The Afterlife exempts itself from the rush, for the Afterlife never closes.

None of this explains the merc standing just through the Afterlife’s doorway, eyes distant but sharp. None of it justifies the way they shake their head and sigh at a nondescript wall. Then they pop the pill—

Somewhere, stuck between fame and the barrel of a gun, Kerry Eurodyne rips off a glove and laughs. It sticks in his chest, jagged, like he’s gasping for air.

From her booth across the bar, Rogue pales, hangs up the phone, then swears, turns on the news, and picks her phone right back up.

Past the Blackwall, for what the living call a heartbeat, a dead woman’s focus falters.

Adam Smasher laughs.

—and almost a full day later, V wakes with a scream, scrambling for the forearm that, moments ago, went blank.

//

V sits above the city for ages, alone, but never lonely. There’s a hand on their wrist. Words unspoken lie heavy and unsteady on their tongue. His tongue. The distinction gets all too narrow now.

One gig. One chance. One person. That’s all they need.

//

_ Hey Johnny _ , the note starts.

He’s been staring at it for ten minutes, holding it in hands that shouldn’t be his, and he still hasn’t gotten past those two words.

He smooths it out and tries again.

_ Hey Johnny, _

_Yeah. I planned for this._ _You’re wondering why—_

He’s not. It’s because V’s a fucking gonk with no sense of self-preservation.

_ —and I actually have three reasons. I’m a gonk, Victor insisted, and you’re my soulmate. Maybe you believe that. Maybe you don’t.  _ ~~_ Maybe I figured out how to tell you by now. I feel so stupid. See what sharing a head does to me?  _ ~~

_ After your night out, I took holos for each mark. They’re on the shard. Hopefully, you’re still young enough that you can figure out how to use it. _

Johnny tacks in the shard. He’s seen the first two attachments before—Jackie’s cross and Goro’s name. 

_ You know these two well enough. If you ever manage to figure out what the hell Goro’s meant though, ring me up and let me know.  _

The third after that resembles a patch of some kind that he doesn’t recognize. Under the logo, it reads Kieran. No last name.

_ The third was my father. Adoptive. Sometimes decent. He’ll know that I’m dead, and that’s all I owe him. _

The fourth mark pictured begins at the base of V’s ribcage and deepens in color and complexity until it ends above V’s hip. It’s a summer rainstorm with the name  _ Rogue Amendiares _ etched in a shadow.

_ Yeah, that was probably part of why she felt weird kissing you at the theatre. Sorry, but not particularly.  _

The fifth he looks at, reads as far as  _ Kerry Eur, _ then immediately flicks over a tab to see if it were some elaborate joke.

_ Kerry told me something funny about this one—apparently it matches the marks you two had, but on the opposite hand. His guru had something profound to say about that. Loops, you know. _

_ Sorry if I stole your boyfriend, but I’m just better looking. _

The last mark spills down between her shoulder blades, black as ink and writhing in complexity. It’s a dog—a cat? Either a cat with a canine face or a dog with feline posture, snarling outward, baring silver teeth, and narrowing silver eyes.  _ Robert Linder _ curls against its jaw like an afterthought, stark in that same shade.

_ There is a chance that I got this all confused, and that in the chaos after the heist I met some other Robert Linder  _ ~~_ who changed my life _ ~~ _.  _

_ I assumed it meant you would kill me. Shows what I know, huh? _

_ I don’t know what will go down at Mikoshi. I don’t know where you’ll choose to go. I hope you won’t stay in Night City. I hope you’ll find some new ink, but I hope you don’t leave the rest hanging. Cept Smasher. Fuck Smasher. _

~~_ I can’t think of how to _ ~~

~~_ Damn it, why is this so _ ~~

~~_ I lo _ ~~

_ Live, Johnny. Or I’ll haunt you for a change. _

_ V. _

//

V is Alt. Alt is V. They are molded together against each other, remade and remaking in each other's image. It’s as intimate as it is violating, and to V, it is all too familiar.

_ We share a soulmate _ , they think at Alt.

_ We don’t have souls _ , Alt replies.

//

_ He’ll come back for you, you know _ , Alt adds, an eternity later.

V’s doubt thrums between them, unvoiced.  _ He’s changed. _

_ Not that much. _

//

It hasn’t been a week when Johnny wakes up to a guest in his apartment.

“You need a better landlord,” Rogue says.

Johnny tosses his head back, fumbles for glasses that V’s eyes never needed. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion. Or your company, come to think of it.” 

“Johnny,” Rogue says. Her tone softens in a way it hasn’t since they first broke up. “You’re wasting time.”

Johnny sneers at her. It feels unfit to the face he’s wearing, uncomfortable and ineffective. “Yeah? Well. I have time to waste.”

Rogue shrugs off her jacket. Johnny readies a snide remark, but it dies on his tongue. 

A V stretches across Rogue’s side, outline filled with overlapping flowers in a dozen shades of grey. Along the left leg of the v, crouched underneath a heavy-laden stalk, he still can make out V’s name.

“What’ll it be, Johnny?” She asks. Each word rolls weighty and deliberate off her tongue. “Would you rather keep treating V like a corpse, or get the fuck up and find them?” 

Johnny sits upright in bed. He turns his back to Rogue, then pulls up his shirt.

His own V faces back out at her. This one is a vulture with outspread wings, splashed between his shoulders in still too-vivid red.

Rogue’s hand brushes over it, then wavers up and to the side, where it halts across Polaris. 

“I’ll be in the car,” she said. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

//

Johnny is not above begging. He has begged on Alt’s behalf, on Rogue’s behalf, on Kerry’s behalf, and now he’s ready to beg for V.

Judy seems inclined to make him—or worse, just tell him to fuck off. Then Evelyn puts a hand on Judy’s shoulder, and the solid sleeves down their arms blend seamlessly together, and Judy sighs.

He doesn’t beg. She doesn’t help. 

Evelyn, however, does.

//

Three months and not enough progress later, someone knocks at Johnny’s door. He opens it, as per usual, with iron in his hand.

The only excuse he has for not using it is that punching Takemura is so much more satisfying.

He intends to use the Malorian after. He picks it up. He points it at Takemura’s forehead from a safe distance—call him what you will, but he’s not a fucking amateur, and he won’t get V’s body flatlined because he underestimated Saburo Arasaka’s ex-bodyguard’s hand-to-hand prowess.

When Takemura spreads his hands up in surrender, a butterfly’s wings wrap around his first finger. 

“I can help,” he swears.

Johnny curses, knocks him out, and dials Rogue.

//

Evelyn gives them an in with the Voodoo Boys. Johnny gives them another. They bring the Relic that Takemura stole. They take the dormant clone that Rogue acquired, and an android body in case they’ve miscalculated somewhere along the line. 

Johnny calls Kerry because he deserves not to find out second-hand if this doesn’t work. Kerry swears at him, so Johnny puts the phone on speaker. Goro and Rogue glare at him, so he stops that too.

“This’ll work,” he says, once Kerry’s dropped into the sudden silence that means he’s worked through as much as he can while still pretending it’s anger. “I’ll be in my body. She’ll be in hers. Ker—”

“Don’t promise,” Kerry says. “Just—don’t promise.”

Johnny nods, even though Kerry can’t see him. “Call ya back in ten.”

//

For the first time since he was fourteen, Johnny wakes up without a single shred of ink. Then, as if the new body just needed a moment to catch up, it sears back in with instant and blinding relief.

_ Kerry Eurodyne. _

_ Rogue Amendiares. _

And he feels rather than sees the  _ V _ .

He’s missing two. He can’t particularly say he wants them back. He’s gotten too much as is, for a reckless, too-old, once-dead punk who never promised anyone anything. 

Speaking of.

He dials Kerry’s number. Three feet away, the phone jangles, startling the surrounding company awake. Takemura wakes first, jumping to his feet, which means that V falls straight into Rogue’s lap. Kerry groans, half-awake, and gropes for his phone.

Johnny smirks into the receiver. “Surprise.”

//

Like him, V lost two marks. Jackie’s cross vanished, as did their father’s patch. They don’t comment, but he knows from experience that they feel the absence, itching like a ghost’s hand against their skin or the lingering touch of eyes from across the room.

Unlike him, V gained two marks.  _ Alt Cunningham  _ whispers from behind their ear in a glitch of static, and when they return from the Aldecaldo camp, contemplative,  _ Panam Palmer  _ wraps in a band around their arm.

Johnny always knew he’d lose them. He just hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

//

Johnny, Rogue, and Kerry visit the Aldecaldo camp together to see V and Goro off. They join the nomads around the fire, banter with V and V’s friends. Johnny spent his own time with the nomads. Rogue did too. Kerry’s the only one who hasn’t, and by the way his face softens in the firelight, Johnny can tell he sees the appeal.

So they get it. They understand V’s choice, and they do their damn best to make it a celebration rather than a send-off. Kerry ribs Takemura for his new style; Rogue swaps stories about Panam and V’s dirtiest gigs; Johnny gets raging fucking drunk and grabs a guitar.

Johnny has some shit to let out, so he does, strumming hard and fast through the classics of  his  day, heckling anyone who suggests pop, and crooning along to country songs he’s half-forgotten. The Aldecados fill in when he misses lyrics. Mitch has great music taste and a surprisingly good singing voice. Panam, on the other hand, is awful. 

It’s a good party. They’re a good audience. 

An hour passes, then another. His fingers begin to ache, and his voice rasps in a way that foretells some pussy-ass honeyed tea in his future.

“I’ll miss V,” Kerry says. 

Johnny’s fingers pause above the strings.

Every soulmate he’s ever had has left him. In the end, he’s only kept three, and those three stayed through no merit of his own.

That doesn’t concern him now.

“V’ll be back,” he says.

“Yeah,” V snorts behind him. “Can’t seem to shake you three. Not that I’ve tried.” 

They sit on Johnny’s other side, opposite Kerry. Johnny tosses an arm over their shoulder and tugs Rogue’s arm so she inches closer. V’s hand creeps up his back, laying against their mark. Kerry’s palm lands over hers, solid and reassuring.

“Better not have,” Kerry chides. “You died twice. That’s plenty.”

“But don’t think that means you can take it easy,” Rogue warns. “So long as I keep working, I’ll work you.”

“Sure,” V says. “Let me know when you’ve got work in Texas.”

From the time you’re born to the time you die, you can’t escape the idea of soulmates. Humans tend to romanticize it, but the truth is simple. A soulmate doesn’t complete you. They can’t fulfill you. Finding them doesn’t guarantee your happiness or your perfect fate. A soulmate just  _ matters _ . Sometimes they’re a benchmark or a high tide, an enemy or a friend. Sometimes they’re a turning point or a crutch in dire straits. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, they are loyal and love you and come back when they leave.

Johnny’s lucky.

V nudges their shoulder against his side. “Take care of the Arch while I’m gone.”

“I’m gonna park her on a Heywood curb and let nature run its course,” he replies.

Kerry nudges his other side, much less gently, and leans around so he can see V. “Don’t listen to this guy. He parked it next to my Guinevere.”

Johnny shakes his head. Three people’s laughter mingles in the air around him. “Kerry, you are hell on my reputation.”

“Don’t worry, babe. I can make up for it.” Kerry's tone dips, alluring in a way that Johnny's long-familiar with. He raises an eyebrow. Really? Here?

“And on  _ that  _ note,” Rogue interrupts. “We should get going. Thanks for the invite, V.”

The moment feels more final. V stretches their arms out and envelopes all three of them in a hug. 

“Now,” V says. They use their most businesslike tone, but the effect falls somewhat short when it’s muffled in your soulmate’s chest. “You all behave. Stay here. Stay alive. Let me hear you on the holo now and again. And I’ll see you in a year.”

“You stay out there a day longer, and I’m sending Johnny after you.” Rogue declares. “With Kerry, too, so—”

“Consider me threatened!” V laughs. “One year. No more.”

They don’t stop talking, not really. Even as V slowly herds the other three to their car, they trade insults, compliments, and banter. V asks after their cat and double-checks that they don’t have any last-minute gigs. Kerry reminds her that she’s the youngest one here, so she has no room to nag. 

Somehow, the three of them get into the Porsche and begin to drive away. Somehow, Johnny manages to pry his eyes off the receding lights of the Aldecaldo camp. Somehow, it doesn’t feel like goodbye.

Somehow, in some way, it feels a bit like home.

**Author's Note:**

> My major points of canon divergence are Evelyn staying with Judy and the Mox, Rogue helping Johnny in the Temperance ending, Takemura leaving Arasaka, and, of course, V getting their body back. That last one only happened because of the first three, and the first three only happen because they know about their soulmates. My logic's strong as pixie dust.
> 
> In any case, I hope you enjoyed the fic! If you have any questions about my admittedly complex AU or my headcanons for other character's soulmates (or soulmarks!), ask away!


End file.
